Check from which view method in controller got invoked ASP.NET MVC

Question

Is there any way to check which View invoked method in ASP.NET MVC?

For example, I have simple static method that returns posts form database and I have two views that are doing similar thing, but still not the same. On one view I'm listing post from logged in user, and on the other I'm showing posts from all users (imagine that like Facebook pages where on the wall you only see your posts, and on the NewsFeed page you can see both your's and your friends posts).

So my concrete question would be, can I implement my method to do something like this:

public static List<Post> GetPosts(int BlockNumber, int BlockSize, string id)
        {
            ApplicationDbContext db = new ApplicationDbContext();

            int startIndex = (BlockNumber - 1) * BlockSize;
            var listPosts = db.Posts.ToList();
            if (METHOD INVOKED FROM ProfilePage SHOW ONLY CURRENT USER POSTS)
            {
                listPosts = listPosts.Where(p => p.UserId ==   id).Reverse().ToList();
            }
            else if(METHOD INVOKED FROM NEWSFEED SHOW ALL USERS POSTS)
            {
                listPosts = listPosts.Reverse().ToList();
            }
            var posts = listPosts.Skip(startIndex).Take(BlockSize).ToList();
            return posts;
        }

My idea is to simple send empty string for id from NewsFeedController, and then check if id is empty show all posts, and if id value is present and not empty show only posts for user with that id. I believe that would work, but I'm interested is there any other, nicer way to do it. Can ASP.NET MVC and C# do something like this? This two views are doing similar things and I would like to avoid unnecessary redundancy of code.

Perhaps you can use `Request.UrlReferrer` which is in the `HttpContext`. — Omri Aharon, Jan 20 '15 at 07:28
One more thing - not connected with the question, but worth to know. Your method reads all the records from db into memory(listPosts = listPosts.Reverse().ToList()) and then creates a 'page' with skip and take. You should consider passing startindex and blocksize to the query - when your app become mature and there would be let's say millions of posts, loading all of them to just filter last 20 would be huge waste of resources — cyberhubert, Jan 20 '15 at 07:47
@cyberhubert Good point. You are totally right. This is a just test app, so it will not have 20 million posts, but that's the point of test apps, predict possible scenarios in future :) — nemo_87, Jan 20 '15 at 07:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:06

You can pass UserId as nullable int and call it in explicit way from your controller. I mean something like that:

public static List<Post> GetPosts(int BlockNumber, int BlockSize, string id, int? userId)

This way you get clean and readable interface, without any 'magic' in the GetPosts method.

If you are sure that you want to follow the idea of "known caller" you can read more on this topic here: How can I find the method that called the current method? however this would be nightmare in further work with this code. Also - have you tought how to test such call?

Check from which view method in controller got invoked ASP.NET MVC

1 Answers1